Bertie Ahern (Dublin Central, Fianna Fail)

I agree with Deputy Rabbitte on the first point. Nobody is suggesting that anybody is giving recognition. However, the reality must be acknowledged, as well. We are trying to end paramilitary activity and criminality and complete decommissioning. We do not want to embark on the next round of trying to end something that is clearly impossible to finish. This does not mean, however, that these organisations have any type of official support. The reality is that one cannot go through Northern Ireland without passing places where the UVF and others were in 1912 or were trained in 1916. Neither the Deputy nor I has respect for any of these activities or all the atrocities over the years. To ask me not alone to try to end paramilitary and criminal activity and bring decommissioning to a conclusion but to disband organisations so that their members will never meet again is to seek the impossible and I have made that clear to groups. I do not see the day when we will all be there commemorating anything that anyone did. That will not happen at any time in the next century, not to mind in the short term.

On the Kelly case, this was only the second case of a licence being suspended. Whenever these cases come up on either side we always ask questions and play an even-handed role. I have raised the cases of loyalist prisoners and fought on behalf of the father of the loyalist leader killed in prison whose name escapes me.

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